Nicholia's father had discovered the secret. Though her marriage to Apollo had been a cold, calculated arrangement—a contract to secure the Brown legacy—Aron Brown's fury knew no bounds. Apollo, polished, well-connected, and undeniably handsome, had been part of the plan. But Eros? A man without a name, without power, without any standing in society… yet bold enough to claim Nicholia's heart. That audacity alone was unforgivable.
When Aron learned that Nicholia was four, maybe five months pregnant, his wrath became merciless. He summoned his enforcers and locked Eros in the dark, damp basement. There, Eros endured endless torment, each minute stretching into a lifetime of pain. Nicholia was confined to a windowless room, stripped of freedom and contact with the outside world. She was no delicate flower, no fragile girl to be broken easily—but the isolation gnawed at her strength. Hunger, thirst, the cold, the echoing silence… it all pressed down on her, trying to crush her indomitable spirit.
In those harrowing months, young Sage went three months without seeing his mother. Each day, the boy's cries and laughter were replaced by absence, a painful void only Nicholia could feel but could not reach. The weight of betrayal and injustice festered inside her like fire, igniting a cold, meticulous rage that refused to be extinguished. Even Apollo, traveling to attend to his obligations abroad, could not intervene—her father had no mercy, and confined Apollo there, God knows enduring whatsoever tortures.Nicholia's suffering only became a crucible by thinking about them in which her resolve was forged. The betrayal of her own people in gnawed her, the servants that she joked with, the people that had her back in the company.. All!!! All!!! All has turned their back on her just by a single command of her father. And she knew to secure her children's future, her husband's future she have to kill him. Aron Brown!
And then the birth of her second son—Felton. In the aftermath, every ounce of pain, every moment of fear, coalesced into a single, unshakable determination. Nicholia rose from the shadows of confinement, her eyes alight with a dangerous clarity. She had survived the unspeakable, and now she would reclaim what was hers, protect those she loved, and ensure that no one—neither tyrant nor coward—would ever control her destiny again.
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Nicholia never bowed. They had tried to break her—lock her away, steal her peace—but the heiress refused the cage. When she learned what her father had done to Eros and Apollo something cold and precise ignited inside her. She rose like a weathered gun: silent, steady, inevitable.
Armed with her sniper, she moved through the mansion like a judgment. Every guard who had laughed at her humiliation, every servant who had closed a door on pain, every hand that had tightened a rope—fell under her aim. Her shots were clinical, spare, never wasted: a head, an artery, a heart. The house answered with the metallic stench of blood, a floor slick with echoing steps. By the time the night ended, thirty-one bodies lay where they had stood, a brutal geometry of names and faces Nicholia had marked for death.
Apollo arrived as the echo of the final volley still lingered in the corridors. He had been kept distant—her father ensured Apollo couldn't return until the birth—but at last he crossed the threshold by god knows how. The mansion he stepped into was not the one he had left. It was a tableau of violence and resolve. Blood had pooled like a confession in the hallway. Draperies were stained; portraits looked down with ruined faces. And there, at the center of the ruin, stood Nicholia—her white gown covered in blood , on her sleeves, on her hand, body, hair, a rifle in her hands, a baby in her arms covered in towel drenched in blood. Her eyes were bright, hard as flint.
Apollo's handsome face, once composed and cultivated, was smudged with grime. Cuts and bruises carved lines into his cheek; blood had mapped small rivers down his collar. He looked less like the prominent husband that left 3 months ago and more like a man who had been dragged through the worst hours and had come out bewildered.
For a breath they regarded one another in the hush that followed the storm. Nicholia's voice—worn raw but steady—cut first. "Those old men betrayed me."
Apollo's nod was slow, a bitter agreement. "Yes. They did."
Her laugh was not a laugh at all. It was a hard, bright thing. "I'm going to kill every one of them," she said, the words like shrapnel.
"Yes. You will," Apollo replied, the certainty of his tone almost a plea.
Nicholia's voice broke then, a single syllable of his name that carried every wrong she had swallowed. "Apollo!!"
She had always tempted fate; now the fate answered. In that cry something shifted—where Apollo had been measured and contained, there was suddenly something raw and exposed. Tears glinted in his eyes, impossible and human. For the first time, Nicholia saw him unarmored by calculation or charm. It stunned her.
"I couldn't save you, him, or anybody. I'm sorry." Her voice was an icicle—apology offered without refuge.
Apollo closed the distance. He was careful, almost reverent, when he reached for the infant she cradled. The child's small body was fragile and warm; Felton, pale with Nicholia's Russian bone beneath his newborn skin. She pressed the baby into Apollo's arms, fingers lingering on his brow. She kissed the infant's forehead with a tenderness that had no parallel in the violence around them.
Then she leaned forward and pecked Apollo's lips—quick, fierce, like a benediction and a command.
Apollo's chest tightened, his hands clutching the baby a little harder. A sob escaped him, raw and trembling. "I promise you, Lia… I will protect them… Sage, Felton, Eros… I'll protect your legacy by any means," he said, his voice breaking under the weight of emotion.
She straightened. Her eyes hardened to steel. "Release him," she said of Eros—her voice icicle-clear. "Tell him to hide."
Apollo's hands tightened on the child. He met her gaze and—without argument, without hesitation—he moved. He would do what she asked.
Nicholia slung the sniper across her shoulder and left the room as she had entered life: a storm on the move. Behind her, the mansion kept its quiet, the blood drying like a map. The living would run; the dead would not forgive. She will rewrite the Brown legacy in a single, terrible night—and the price would've to be paid in blood.